We Refuse To Be Targets

When Barack Obama was elected president, he hoped to eliminate nuclear weapons.
His hope (expressed in his visit to Hiroshima) is still to eliminate such weapons.
But that elimination never happens. Almost a decade ago, four powerful retired
politicians – Sam Nunn, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, and William Perry –
called for ending nuclear weapons. Nothing happened. Now Perry, President Bill Clinton’s
Secretary of Defense writes, “Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear
catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War, and most people are
blissfully unaware of this danger.” Still, nothing happens.

The world still has 15,000 nuclear weapons and tons of fissionable material – enough
to destroy life as we know it – in addition to the scientists who could give
nuclear plans to rogue regimes as did Pakistan’s Abdul Qadeer Khan.

We live near targets – Washington D.C. and Omaha, Nebraska. Our nation’s capital
has always been treated as ‘ground zero.’ (In 2011 the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory released National Capital Region Key Response Planning Factors
for the Aftermath of Nuclear Terrorism instructing Washingtonians what to do
after an attack)

Eastern Nebraska is not very different. Since the 1950s, Offutt Base near
Omaha has been the command center for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In 1959, the
Rev. Abraham Muste
marched to Mead, Nebraska, to protest intercontinental ballistic missiles
there. For more than 50 years, Nebraska peace activists have sought to spotlight
the doomsday mission of Strategic Air Command, now called US Strategic Command
(StratCom). One of us spoke to a Junior Chamber of Commerce at the Nebraska
State Penitentiary about eastern Nebraska’s ground zero status. Afterward a
prisoner came up and said, “I am not right in the head; I can’t read; but I
understood what your speech meant for me in this prison.” We are all in this
prison.

Our efforts to get out of the crosshairs have not succeeded for obvious reasons.
For the cities of Omaha and Bellevue, StratCom and its dozens of satellite companies
employ about 100,000 people. Our Congressmembers are expected to deliver appropriations
that feed the nuclear monster and – though some of our representatives have a
good sense of how dangerous nuclear proliferation is – they cannot limit the central
industry in our area and retain office.

Now the Department of Defense is mounting a soup-to-nuts nuclear weapons “modernization”
program estimated to cost at least $1 trillion over the next 30 years. New or
upgraded weapons laboratories, warheads, missiles, submarines and bombers are
all planned. Predictably, every other nuclear weapons state has followed suit,
announcing “modernization” plans. Add in the outrageous statements on nuclear weapons use by some presidential
candidates, and one can see a new arms race in the making.

Despite our unsuccessful local efforts, we do not wish be targets any more.
We believe millions of people tired of dreaming the nuclear nightmare need to
be brought into the process. We are not alone. Mayors of 5300 cities across
the world have asked that their cities no longer be targets of national military
decisions in which their communities have no role. We propose the creation
of an international campaign that stands up to say “We refuse to be targets”
– to ask the US, Russia, Britain, France, China, Pakistan, India, Israel, North
Korea and other countries having, or contemplating having nuclear weapons, to
cease and desist.

We need a new Nuclear Freeze and then systematic reductions with protocols
for controlling fissionable materials. We envision a campaign advocating gradual,
verifiable reductions: first 25 percent or more (which was at least proposed
for US/Russian bilateral reductions to follow-up the New START agreement), then
50 percent, then 75 percent, and finally 100 percent in nuclear warheads and
fissionable materials.

The peoples of the world will ultimately demand the total elimination of nuclear
weapons. The situations in Pakistan and India, Russia and Ukraine, Syria and
Iraq, and several other countries, however, make near-term reductions urgent.
As we approach the August 6 and 9 anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki
bombings, President Obama is considering executive actions to reduce nuclear
dangers. He certainly should announce further reductions, taking US warheads
off hair-trigger alert status, and declaring a No First Use policy.

These steps could reinvigorate the international nuclear arms reduction process,
but civil society must demand more. We believe that although the people of Nebraska
and Washington have been relatively impotent by ourselves, we could act in concert
with peace movements across the world to make happen what the politicians and
military could not.

Paul A. Olson heads Nebraskans for Peace’s Anti-War Committee, and is Kate
Foster Professor emeritus, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Kevin Martin, syndicated
by PeaceVoice, is Executive Director of Peace Action, the country’s largest grassroots peace and disarmament
organization with more than 200,000 supporters nationwide.